EDITORIAL: City purchasing: Buyer's nightmare

Monday

Oct 1, 2012 at 7:36 PM

THE MESS in the city of Savannah's Purchasing Department, which the public and City Council learned about in August, is worse than what was first described.

Original reports from more than a month ago didn't go into detail about the ramifications of the hundreds of bills that the city hadn't paid for goods and services and how citizens might be affected if these lapses continued.

Upon closer inspection, they were serious.

As this newspaper's City Hall reporter, Lesley Conn, outlined on Sunday, these problems potentially threatened the city's water supply and the public safety of citizens and police officers who protect them. That's not a bureaucratic headache limited to government paper-pushers. It's a potential nightmare that could affect everyone.

No wonder why Mayor Edna Jackson and a majority on City Council asked City Manager Rochelle Small-Toney to resign last week. Her credibility is gone. The situation inside the Purchasing Department, which had been turned on its head, apparently at the city manager's direction, was bad enough. But the more that's uncovered, the worse it seems to get.

The latest findings underscore the need for a management change at the top of city government. They include:

• Concern from the head of the city's water department. He was worried the city wouldn't be able to acquire the chemicals it needed to make the water safe because its vendor would put it on credit hold.

• A worried email from the officer who supervised the metro police department's armory. He was concerned about an order for 590 new Glock handguns for police officers, submitted months earlier. He was giving it "emergency" status.

The problems within the Purchasing Department were among the reasons the mayor and council reprimanded Ms. Small-Toney on Aug. 31. They asked for immediate improvement on her part within the next 90 days. Instead, things appeared to be deteriorating. So they asked her to resign by this Thursday's City Council meeting, or be fired - a perfectly fair, reasonable and necessary option.

The mayor and city aldermen had bragged earlier this year that Savannah was in fine fiscal condition, contrary to many other cities across the country that faced tough times. But behind the scenes at City Hall, the situation inside the Purchasing Department told a different story than what elected officials were saying.

As this newspaper explained Sunday, hundreds of requisitions for goods and services were backing up in the Purchasing Department by mid-August. Every aspect of city operations - water quality, police, traffic engineering and City Hall itself - were affected. The total backlog of unpaid bills topped $6 million by Aug. 23 - a staggering amount that included an increase of $800,000 in the 20 days prior to that date.

In explaining the backlog to City Council in August, Ms. Small-Toney blamed inadequacies with a new computer system installed last October and with staff difficulty adjusting to the complicated program. She also cited Purchasing staff taking advantage of the 2011 early retirement program.

But her explanation doesn't pass muster. This newspaper reported that the Purchasing Department had been working for more than a year to implement and train on the new system. By August 2012, it wasn't the computer system that was new. It was almost the entire Purchasing staff.

A predictable amount of finger-pointing is now taking place among many of those involved, including Ms. Small-Toney and the former head of Purchasing, Carla Byrd, who has since been demoted and moved into a new job. Some former employees have spoken out, too.

But the most important thing is getting this department back on track as soon as possible.

Joy Kerkhoff, a senior city employee who was the former acting Purchasing chief and was moved out of that office, demoted and pushed toward retirement, is back in charge of Purchasing as an assistant director. That sounds like a prudent move. Among her first moves should be paying bills that directly affect the continued delivery of important services, like safe water and public safety.

She also needs help from her superiors in repairing this dysfunctional department.

The city charter prevents the mayor and aldermen from getting directly involved in personnel matters. That's the city manager's call.

But with a short-timer in the city's top job, elected officials have a responsibility to their constituents to make sure the next tier of administrators have their support.

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